THE JOURNEY OF MANKIND

THE INCREDIBLE HUMAN JOURNEY

Professor Stephen Oppenheimer's meticulously researched classic 'Out of Eden' ['The Real Eve'], which created the synthesis of genetic science, archaeology, climatology, fossil study and which forms the basis of the Journey of Mankind Genetic Map, has been used extensively in the story structure of this 5-part BBC documentary series.

'In this BBC documentary, Dr Alice Roberts travels the globe to discover the incredible story of how humans left Africa to colonise the world - overcoming hostile terrain, extreme weather and other species of human. She pieces together precious fragments of bone, stone and new DNA evidence and discovers how this journey changed these African ancestors into the people of today.

Alice travels to Africa in search of the birthplace of the first people. They were so few in number and so vulnerable that today they would probably be considered an endangered species. So what allowed them to survive at all? The Bushmen of the Kalahari have some answers - the unique design of the human body made them efficient hunters and the ancient click language of the Bushmen points to an early ability to organise and plan.

Humans survived there, but Africa was to all intents and purposes a sealed continent. So how and by what route did humans make it out of Africa? Astonishing genetic evidence reveals that everyone alive today who is not African descends from just one successful, tiny group which left the continent in a single crossing, an event that may have happened around 70 thousand years ago. But how did they do it? Alice goes searching for clues in the remote Arabian Desert.'

BOOK REVIEW BY DR ALICE ROBERTS

Out of Eden by Professor Stephen Oppenheimer

'A wonderful, very readable book, written by an expert: Stephen Oppenheimer explains how our genes hold clues to the origin of our species, and tell the story of how our ancestors colonised the world.'

Dr Alice Roberts, University of Bristol,
Author of "The Incredible Human Journey".